Week In Game News: May 9th 2014

Week In Game News: May 9th 2014

Bill Gates, in an interview with Fox Business, said that he would support a decision to create a spinoff of the Xbox business. But Xbox quickly responded that they had no plans of doing so. On February 4th this year, Gates stepped down as Chairman of Microsoft with Satya Nadella, who Gates works with closely, taking the place of Microsoft’s CEO.

With the announcement of the next Call of Duty game entitled Advanced Warfare, The games developer Sledghammer Games said that it had taken 2 and a half years to create “…brand-new tech to control and support this game.”. This means that the new Call of Duty will have more than new game engine when it is released on November 4th for previous generation consoles and PC.

The EVE Online community monument was unveiled by the game’s developer CCP in Reykjavik, Iceland to coincide with last week’s EVE Fanfest convention. But within a few days it was vandalised with a subscriber’s name being specifically targeted and scratched off the monument. The people responsible for the vandalism have been found and punished. CCP said in a statement:

“Three individuals have been permanently removed from the EVE Community. A total of 7 EVE Online accounts, and 1 Dust 514 account belonging to them have been permanently banned. Another individual who was indirectly involved in the vandalism has received a 6 month ban from EVE Online on their sole registered account. The four individuals involved are also blacklisted permanently from attending future Fanfest events.”

Real life punishments are still possible with the perpetrators also facing the possibility of criminal charges and recovery of costs fines to repair the monument. CCP said that any further punishments will remain confidential.

The game “Earth: Year 2066” was removed from Steam Early Access. The game had been criticized for being broken and unplayable. The games developer, going by the Steam user name Muxwell, deleted negative comments from the forums to try and boost the positive image of the game. Those who bought the game can claim a refund until Monday, May 9th.

Nintendo has reported losses of $455 million for the fiscal year of 2013, having revised the estimate from a loss of $355 million in January. With the news that the Wii U sold only 2.8 million units, behind their 9 million unit prediction, and the 3DS only sold 12.26 million units, just behind their 13.5 million unit prediction, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that the company was to release a new product as early next year, that could use near field communication technology like that used in “Skylanders” and “Disney Infinity”. He also said that more information would be released at E3 in June and reiterated that Nintendo will not enter the smartphone game market.

Also for E3, EA has announced that they will be revealing 6 new games at their conference. Their conference will be streamed live via the EA website, Spike TV the official television channel for the event, and via EA’s Twitch channel. Sony are also rumoured to be announcing new games during their conference if a leak is to be believed. It is rumoured to include “The Last of Us 2” “God of War 4”, a Ninja Theory game believed to be “Heavenly Sward 2” with “Uncharted 4” gameplay and much more.

Finally, Epic Games is developing a new Unreal Tournament game that has the current title of “Unreal Tournament 2014”. The game is set to be a free game supported initially by micro-transactions but other payment methods where eluded too as well.